Israel concerned over `SS-style’ advertisement campaign

Hong Kong, March 23 (DPA) Israeli diplomats in China have raised concerns over a national business awards contest with a logo that looks similar to the Nazi SS insignia, a news report said Monday. Billboard posters for the China Top Brand awards scheme have appeared in Hong Kong with a logo that looks similar to the lightning-strike style insignia used by the German SS, a powerful paramilitary organisation responsible for many of the Nazi’s worst crimes.

Guy Kivetz, press officer for the Israeli embassy in Beijing, told the South China Morning Post he believed the logo was unintentional and was not meant to look like the SS insignia.

However, he said: “We intend to raise the matter with the organisation as soon as possible to explain the sensitivity.”

“It is important to understand the award, as well as the Chinese people in general, is not suspected of being anti-Semitic in any way or form,” Kivetz stressed.

“There is no anti-Semitism in China and the attitudes towards Jews, in the past and in the present, were, and still are, always very positive.”

The newspaper said it was unable to get a response from the organisation running the awards scheme, which recognises China’s best examples of business branding.

Ignorance over the sensitivity of Nazi-style logos and symbols in Asia, where many people have little knowledge of the holocaust, has led to incidents in the past.

A Hitler-themed pub in Hong Kong with walls covered in pictures of the former German leader along with Word War II scenes caused an outcry five years ago that led to the pictures being removed.